David Ignatius Walsh (November 11, 1872June 11, 1947) was an American politician from Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 46th governor of Massachusetts before winning election to several terms in the United States Senate, becoming the first Irish Catholic from Massachusetts to fill either office.
Born in Leominster, Massachusetts, Walsh was educated at the College of the Holy Cross, subsequently entering a legal practice in Boston after graduating from the Boston University School of Law. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1900 to 1901, establishing a reputation as an anti-imperialist and isolationist. In 1912, he won election as the 43rd lieutenant governor, becoming the state's first Democratic lieutenant governor in seventy years. He served as governor from 1914 to 1916 and led a successful effort to call for a state constitutional convention.
Walsh won election to the Senate in 1918, earning a reputation as a supporter of Irish independence and as a strong opponent of the Treaty of Versailles. He lost his re-election bid in 1924 but returned to the Senate two years later. Walsh supported Al Smith over Franklin D. Roosevelt at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. During the Roosevelt Administration, he introduced the Walsh-Healey Act that established labor standards for government contractors. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Walsh opposed American involvement in World War II and was a leading member of the America First Committee. However, in a reversal from his earlier stance on the League of Nations, he voted to ratify the United Nations Charter in 1946.
Walsh lost his 1946 re-election bid to Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and died the following year. A maverick in the Senate who regularly broke with his own party, he was remembered chiefly for his isolationism, as well as his passionate defense of Irish and Catholic interests. Walsh, who never married, was also dogged by accusations of homosexuality during his lifetime, including a sensationalized scandal in his final term that he privately called "a tragic Gethsemane" to his political career.
Early life and education Walsh was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1872, the ninth of ten children. His parents were Irish Catholic immigrants. Walsh attended public schools in his birthplace and later in Clinton, Massachusetts. His father, a comb maker, died when he was twelve. Thereafter, his mother ran a boarding house.Wayman, 1–23
Walsh graduated from Clinton High School in 1890 and from the College of the Holy Cross in 1893. He attended Boston University Law School, where he graduated in 1897. Walsh was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1897, later practicing in Boston.
Career in state politics Walsh was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for two terms in 1900 and 1901, elected from a longtime Republican district. From the start of his political career, he was anti-imperialist and isolationist and opposed America's authority over the Philippines as part of the settlement of the Spanish–American War. Walsh's vote to restrict the hours that women and children could work to 58 led to his defeat when he sought another term.Wayman, 34–35 He next lost the race for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 1910, but ran again and won in 1912,Wayman, 44–45 becoming the state's first Democratic lieutenant governor in 70 years. He became the first Irish and the first Catholic Governor of Massachusetts in 1914, successfully challenging the incumbent Democratic governor Eugene Foss for the party nomination, and then defeating a divided Republican opposition (and Foss, who ran as an independent) with a comfortable plurality.In the 1913 election Walsh won 180,400 votes; Progressive Charles S. Bird, 126,700; Republican Augustus P. Gardner, 116,300; and Independent Eugene Foss, 20,900. The American Review of Reviews, vol. 48 (December 1913), 671 He served two one-year terms.
He offered voters an alternative to boss-dominated politics, expressing a "forthright espousal of government responsibility for social welfare".Rosenrantz, 137, 139 Walsh proposed increased government responsibility for charity work and the care of the insane and reorganized the state's management of these areas with little opposition.Rosenkrantz, 140–42 In his 1914 campaign for re-election, he cited as accomplishments an increase in the amounts paid for workman's compensation and improved administration of the state's care for the insane.The New York Times: "Gov. Walsh Takes Stump", October 18, 191, accessed October 30, 2010 As governor, Walsh fought unsuccessfully for a Women's Suffrage Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution.James J. Kenneally, "Catholicism and Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts", Catholic Historical Review, v. 53 (1967), 54–55 He also campaigned for film censorship in the state after large protests were mounted against the racial depictions in D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation.Melvyn Stokes, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation: A History of "The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 146 Several progressive labor laws were also introduced during his time as governor.Title: Labor Legislation of 1914 : Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 166, P.125-143
He supported the work of the Anti-Death Penalty League, a Massachusetts organization founded in 1897 that was particularly active and nearly successful in the decade preceding World War I.Alan Rogers, "Chinese and the Campaign to Abolish Capital Punishment in Massachusetts", in Journal of American Ethnic History, v. 18 (1999), 55–56
As governor he asked the legislature to call a Constitutional Convention without success. When the legislature later called a convention, Walsh won election as a delegate-at-large as part of a slate of candidates who endorsed adding provisions for initiative and referendum to the state constitution, key Progressive-era reforms. He served as a delegate-at-large to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1917 and 1918 that saw those reforms passed.Augustus Peabody Loring, "A Short Account of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1917–1919", in New England Quarterly, v. 6 (1933), 89, 14, 54–56 His speech on behalf of initiative and referendum shows him in the role of populist and reformer:Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917–1918, vol. 2: The Initiative and Referendum (Boston, 1918), 570–85, quote 572
In 1914, Walsh was challenged for the governorship by Samuel W. McCall, a moderate Republican. He narrowly won reelection,Sobel, pp. 89–90 probably due to the presence of a Progressive (Bull Moose) candidate who took votes from McCall.Gentile, p. 386 McCall successfully reunited the Republicans and the Progressives the next year, and defeated Walsh, in part by supporting Walsh's call for a constitutional convention.Sobel, pp. 101, 107-109
Walsh returned to the practice of law after leaving office, working with his older brother Thomas in his hometown of Clinton.James Clark Fifield, The American Bar: Contemporary Lawyers of the United States and Canada (Minneapolis: James C. Fifield Company, 1918), 285
Career in national politics In 1918, Walsh was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, serving his first term from March 4, 1919, to March 3, 1925. He was the first Irish Catholic senator from Massachusetts, and second Massachusetts senator to be elected by popular vote, after the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A noted orator, he introduced Irish Republic President Éamon de Valera at Fenway Park on June 29, 1919.Wayman, 108–11
Walsh broke with Democratic President Woodrow Wilson on the subject of the Treaty of Versailles, joining fellow Massachusetts senator (and Republican) Henry Cabot Lodge in opposition. His initial objections stemmed from the fact that the proposed League of Nations would "make secure and assured the rights of every single nation in the world except Ireland." In general, he felt that the Treaty failed to adequately provide for the right to self-determination, which had been articulated in Wilson's Fourteen Points. Walsh also became a vocal critic of Article 10, which would have allowed the League of Nations to make war without a vote by the US Congress. Consequently he was labeled one of the "Irreconcilables", a bloc of 12–18 mostly Republican senators who refused to pass the treaty even with the "reservations" proposed by Lodge.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1924, he spoke in favor of condemning the Ku Klux Klan by name in the party platform: "We ask you to cut out of the body politic with the sharpest instrument at your command this malignant growth which, injected, means the destruction of everything which has made America immortal. If you can denounce Republicanism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism. If you can denounce Bolshevism, you can denounce Ku Kluxism."New York Times: June 29, 1924, accessed October 30, 2010. Walsh and others who shared his position attacked the Klan largely for its opposition to Catholics and Jews, notably potential Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith. For Walsh's support of Negro rights, see his speech at Howard University: The Inauguration of J. Stanley Durkee as President of Howard University ... (Washington: Howard University, 1919), 26–27 Walsh was one of nine Senators to oppose the Immigration Act of 1924.TO AGREE TO REPORT OF CONFERENCE COMMITTEE ON H.R. 7995, (APP. 5/26/1924, 43 STAT. L. 153), A BILL TO LIMIT THE IMMIGRATION OF ALIENS INTO THE UNITED STATES. (P. 8568-2).
Walsh failed to win reelection by just 20,000 votes in 1924, the year of the Coolidge landslide, and briefly resumed the practice of law in Boston. Following the death of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republicans fought hard to retain his seat. Though Herbert Hoover and Charles Evans Hughes campaigned for his opponent, in the November 1926 special election Walsh won the right to complete the remaining two years of Lodge's term,Wayman, 153, 159; Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon, 2009), 653Time: "National Affairs: Lodge", November 17, 1924, accessed October 28, 2010. Time magazine noted the special election posed a risk to the Republicans because Walsh had come so close to surviving the Coolidge landslide in 1924. defeating William Morgan Butler, a friend of Coolidge and head of the Republican National Committee.
Walsh's 1924 defeat also marked a turning point in his political philosophy. He had previously endorsed an activist role for government, but after 1924 his rhetoric increasingly attacked the "federal bureaucracy" and "big government". Though he had once advocated in favor of federal child labor legislation, he became one of its most consistent opponents.Rosenkrantz, 139–42, 156–7, 158n
In 1929, Time published a detailed profile of Walsh and his voting record.Time: "Letters", November 25, 1929, accessed October 28, 2010 It noted that he voted for the Jones Act of 1929 that increased penalties for the violation of Prohibition, but said the Senator "votes Wet, drinks Wet". Its more personal description said: